Akamai Q1 2015 Report Sees UK Average Broadband Speeds Hit 11.6Mbps

The latest global Q1 2015 State of the Internet report from Akamai has revealed that the world’s average fixed line broadband download speed is now 5Mbps (up by 10% since Q4 2014), while the United Kingdom increased by 6.7% in the quarter to 11.6Mbps. Overall the UK is now the 21st fastest in the world, which is down three places from the end of 2014.

Akamai operates a global Content Delivery Network, which accounts for 15-30% of all web traffic, although their data should not be taken as a reflection of actual end-user connection speeds (i.e. it’s more a reflection of the CDN performance and related connections to ISPs around the world).

Never the less this does provide for an interesting window on the Internet performance between countries, albeit only in the most general of senses. For example, South Korea is known to be one of the fastest countries for broadband because they run gigabit (1000Mbps+) capable fibre optic (FTTH/P) lines to most premises, yet their average speed is just 23.6Mbps.

Part of the reason for this, aside from the CDN aspect, is also because in the real-world not everybody chooses the fastest package or technology (many will pick a cheaper and slower option), while other services may be subject to traffic restrictions etc. On top of that most online services can’t even come close to harnessing Gigabit speeds.

The UK doesn’t show up in the top ten table, although our performance is by no means terrible. Overall 85% of broadband users in the UK experienced download speeds of 4Mbps+ (up from 83% in Q4), while 41% could receive 10Mbps+ (up from 38%) and the proportion able to get speeds of 15Mbps+ stands at 24% (up from 22%).

Finally, the UK’s peak download speed has reached 51.6Mbps (up from 48.8Mbps). But clearly other countries are improving at a faster pace; hence the Q1 2015 drop in ranking for average speeds.

At this point it’s useful to contrast our results with those for the wider Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, which shows that we’re ahead of the EU’s other major countries (e.g. Germany, France, Spain and Italy), yet trailing plenty of others. Germany are also closing fast (they were ranked 29th in the previous quarter and have now climbed to 26th).

The report also includes data for Mobile Broadband (3G and 4G) performance, which claims that the average mobile download speed in the United Kingdom is currently 20.4Mbps (up from 16Mbps in Q4 2014 and 8.1Mbps in Q3 2014) and we also delivered a peak mobile speed of 90.9Mbps (up from 61.8Mbps in Q4 2014).

However it’s wise to take Akamai’s mobile performance figures with a big pinch of salt as we’ve seen them jump around like a wild stallion over the past few quarters, which in our view makes the data less credible because the average should generally reflect a much more gradual movement.

Never the less the UK’s average speed performance makes us the fastest country in Europe for mobile downloads, with Denmark a distant 2nd on 10Mbps (up from 8.8Mbps in Q4 2014).

Akamai’s State of the Internet Q1 2015 Report
http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet/